1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an IC positioning device capable of shifting the leads of an IC loaded in a socket to a correct location suitable for physical contact.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
An IC shown in FIG. 1 has leads arranged in array along the side surfaces of an IC body 1 and projecting outwardly therefrom.
FIG. 2 shows a socket having a plurality of contacts 3 which can contact the IC placed in the socket. The socket has an IC receiving portion 5 formed in a center portion on an upper surface of a socket body 4. The contacts 3 are arranged in array along the opposite two or four sides of the IC receiving portion 5.
A cover 6, which is movable upwardly and downwardly, overlies an upper part of the socket body 4. When the cover 6 is lowered, the contacts 3 are caused to be displaced backwardly against their resiliency to move the contacts out of physical contact with the IC leads 2. When the contacts 3 are displaced forwardly by their own restoring force, the contacts 3 are brought into contact with the upper surfaces of the IC leads 2 under pressure.
As means for transforming the lowering motion of the cover 6 to the displacing motion of the contacts 3, there is employed a turnable lever 7 capable of contacting the contacts 3. Instead of providing the turnable lever 7, the contacts 3 may be displaced backwardly by a lowering force of the cover 6 acting on pressure receiving portions which are integral with the contacts 3, respectively.
As best shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, in the above exemplified socket, the lower surfaces of the leads 2 are supported on a seat surface 8, and outer side surfaces of the leads on the extreme ends 2a of each array group of leads 2 are restricted by positioning walls 9 which project from opposite ends of the seat surface 8, so that the leads 2 are all correctly positioned.
However, recently, the arrangement pitches of the IC leads 2 were reduced to 0.3 mm or 0.4 mm, and with the progress of this tendency, the width of each lead was also miniaturized.
In this way, in case the IC leads are arranged at very small pitches and miniaturized, it is very difficult to correctly position the contacts with respect to the IC leads by use of the positioning walls 9 which are fixedly arranged in place as shown in FIGS. 3 and 4. As a consequence, the centers of the IC leads and the contacts 3 are overly displaced as shown in FIGS. 3 and 4. This problem is aggravated by manufacturing tolerances of the positioning walls 9 and the leads 2.
The present invention has been accomplished in order to obviate the above problem.